Wedding Photography Victoria BC Wedding Photographer Bay Area CA Jesse Holland

Mike and Mikaila :: A Seattle Engagement

Jesse — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:58:14 +0000

I’ve known Mikaila for many, many years as our parents are friends. We would see each other every few years, but never kept in the best of touch. So it was a delight to have her get in touch with me a number of months back about doing her wedding photos. I am very excited for Mikaila and Mike’s wedding this summer in the San Juan Islands and I had a great time in Seattle doing their engagement photos.

A Sweet Sixteen Portrait Session

Jesse — Mon, 07 May 2012 18:01:32 +0000

Last month I had the pleasure of shooting a Sweet Sixteen Makeover Party. The always talented Sharon or Sharon Rai Hair & Makeup Artistry, gave a group of girls some makeovers and I came along and did a mini photo shoot with them once they are all done up. It was a very fun party and the girls all had a blast.

Seattle Sneak Peak – Mikaila and Mike

Jesse — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:43:09 +0000

I had the pleasure of heading over to Seattle this weekend to shoot Mike and Mikaila’s engagement photos. They were excellent tour guides and I am super excited for their wedding this summer. More to come, but here is one from the Seattle Library – a place I now LOVE!

Hornby 2012

Jesse — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:05:33 +0000

Last year around this time I took off to Hornby Island with only one woman I knew. By the end of the weekend I had made seven new friends. So it was with great joy that I headed back to Hornby last week, to see those ladies again and meet yet another wonderful woman. I didn’t take quite as many photos this year as I did last, but it was nice to just kick back, relax, read, drink wine, eat and eat and eat and play with Tess.

The other lovely ladies at Hornby were:

LIBERTY TREE PHOTOGRAPHY :: Emily Hoskins
ALANNA CLEMPSON PHOTOGRAPHY
SIMPLY ROSE PHOTOGRAPHY :: Rose Dykstra
E/A PHOTOGRAPHY :: Emmy-Lou McMillan
REBECCA WELLMAN PHOTOGRAPHY
VICKI GANNON PHOTOGRAPHY
JENNIFER DODD PHOTOGRAPHY
JENNIFER ARMSTRONG PHOTOGRAPHY
DEB GALE

Flying over Flying M

Jesse — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:53:40 +0000

So I got to go for a plane ride in a little private plane while at Flying M. Which was REALLY COOL!

This is the plane, I don’t know enough about planes to tell you anything about this one, other then I was told it is fast for it’s size.

Here is my Aunt and I brushing up on our Pilot safety, etc. We spent a lot of time at a 45 degree angle to the earth, so here are some clouds. And this is the ranch, from way up high. All those “puddles of water” are vernal pools.

I really lucked out on this trip! Big thanks to our pilot and my Uncle for letting me tag along!

Flying M Ranch

Jesse — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:26:47 +0000

Over the weekend I had an amazing oppurtunity to visit a private ranch near Modesto, Ca. Flying M Ranches are a huge piece of property just outside of Yosemite. My Uncle Bob has been coming to Flying M for the last 31 years to study the vernal pools that dot the property. One of his big finds was identifying a grass (whose name of course I have forgotten) that was previously thought to be extinct on the property. This year I got to tag along and am so glad that I got to see this amazing landscape. The property is currently being leased to a cattle rancher. Luckily the cows left us all alone, but being shy they also wouldn’t let us get to close, so I don’t have any good close ups of them. Here everyone is is checking out a very old mortar and pestle that have been living out here for at least a thousand years. We found a few of these random rock washes on the side of a small hill. Actually they aren’t that random as they are in the shallow slope of the hill after a steeper bit up him. As the rain, cows and wind come along these rocks slowly make their way down the hill to form these washes.
The Uncles cooking breakfast.Watching this tike run through this vernal pool was the highlight of the last evening at Flying M.

Check back tomorrow for some more photos of Flying M, taken from the air.

Stephanie and Woody :: A Sonoma Engagement

Jesse — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 23:58:17 +0000

Well I think I can say I am off and running for the 2012 wedding season. If nothing else I am off and running. Last week I had the pleasure of finally meeting Stephanie and Woody in person. With them being on the East Coast and me being out West it took a while to work all our schedules out to meet up. But boy am I glad we did! I have been excited to work with these two from the get go, but I am all out pumped to work with them come September. They have chosen a beautiful spot in Sonoma to get married, at the Culinary School and Bed and Breakfast Ramekins. I also get to work with wedding planner extrodinaire Elizabeth from Lowe House Creative again, which makes me very happy.

With a little help from my aunt and a bunch of online research we came up with a game plan to hit up Gloria Ferrer (try saying Ferrer three times fast) and Cornerstone Gardens as the two locations for the shoot. I love California and have a special place in my heart for Sonoma, as that is where my grandparents used to live, but I had never been to either of these places, so it was a lot of fun to do some new exploring.

Huge thanks to the staff at Gloria Ferrer for granting us special access to this cave!!

Sonoma Sneak Peak :: Stephanie and Woody

Jesse — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 04:53:45 +0000

I promise there are LOTS of more photos to come, but between driving back to Sacramento, going out to dinner with my family (hurray!) and buying a new card reader – yes I did forget one thing on this trip – I only had time to edit a couple photos. So, here is a sneak peak from Steph and Woody’s awesome engagement shoot today. I am even more excited to be working with these two after spending a lovely afternoon together.

Ansel Adams – A Wedding Photographer?

Jesse — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:52:23 +0000

Growing up we didn’t have a ton of photography in my home. A few family albums, yes, and one hallway with our school portraits on it, but that was it. No photography as art. But every year my parents would buy an Ansel Adams calendar and it would hang in the kitchen with all our info on it. So, the one photographer I grew up knowing about was Ansel.

So imagine my shock when I found out that my stepmother’s mother, Cay, had Ansel as her wedding photographer! Yes, you read that correctly. World famous landscape photographer and all around legend photographed a wedding.

My step-grandmother got married in Yosemite, on the lawn of her fathers house; he was the superintendent of the park and as such was living in a beautiful spot along the Merced River. Cay remembers that they had a great view of Half Dome from the front yard and Yosemite Falls could be seen from the back.

During this time Ansel was doing quite a bit of work inYosemite, having a dark room set up in Best’s Studio, a studio started by his father in law in the Valley. Since Cay was going to school in Arizona, before she got married, she had even bummed a ride, or two, with Ansel to and from school, as Ansel did work all across the West.

Cay remembers one time when Ansel was in town he came over to her sorority to take her to lunch. The gossip about the bearded, scruffy looking man, who took her to lunch, went on for a few days afterwards.

Cay says father must have paid Ansel some money for shooting her wedding, but she doesn’t know how much. She does remember though, that he brought along a second photographer to help during the ceremony. Her favorite photo from her wedding is the one of her in front of Half Dome, though she does remember it took Ansel quite a long time to get it to be perfect and, at the time, what she really wanted to do was go down and go swimming with her new husband.

As a wedding present Ansel presented Cay and Andrew with a print of Moon Rise Over Hernandez on the back porch of her parent’s house. To this day that print hangs in her home.

As a wedding photographer myself, I do love to tell this story. I am not going to lie, it tends to impress people, just a little, and I love the thin connection it gives me to a man whose work I am in awe of.

A New Avatar

Jesse — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:06:31 +0000

A few weeks ago my fellow photo friends Nicole Brown, Krysta Dey and I all got together to shoot each other (with our cameras). We had such a great time that we even got yelled at – turns out those old windows at Market Square don’t keep a lot of noise out. There was a Marketing Seminar going on in one of the rooms we were shooting near and as I was telling (possibly semi-yelling – I know my voice carries) Nicole what a great job she was doing someone came out and asked if we could “keep it down.” Ooooops! Here are a few of my favorite shots of the lovely ladies:

And here are my favorites from Krysta:And my faves from Nicole Brown:

Thanks ladies!